Santa Coloma

The church bell strikes noon and only three cars line the single street. At 763 metres above sea level, Santa Coloma sits high enough for the air to feel thinner, yet the horizon stretches so wide you can almost see the curvature of the earth. Ninety-two residents. Three times as many storks. This is La Rioja’s interior stripped back to essentials: cereal plains, adobe walls, and silence that actually registers in your ears.

A village measured in footsteps, not miles

Santa Coloma’s entire historic core fits inside a rectangle 300 metres long and half as wide. Stone houses the colour of dry biscuit press together, their wooden balconies warped by decades of sun and winter mist. There is no main square worthy of a postcard; instead, narrow lanes taper into dirt tracks within three minutes of the church door. Park where the tarmac ends—just beyond the last lamppost—and walk. The only traffic you’ll meet is the occasional tractor hauling irrigation pipe.

The parish church of Santa Coloma itself is small enough to survey in forty seconds, yet stay longer and the details accumulate: a Romanesque capital reused as a holy-water stoup, a 17th-century bell cast with the maker’s initials still sharp. Inside, the air smells of beeswax and sun-baked plaster; outside, swallows stitch flight paths between the belfry and the fields. Services are held twice a week; the rest of the time the door remains unlocked—an honesty system that feels almost archaic elsewhere in Europe.

Walking into the calendar

Leave the last house behind and the camino real drops gently between wheat and barley. Because the surrounding upland is essentially a plateau, gradients are forgiving; an hour’s circuit at an amble brings you to an abandoned threshing floor where the only soundtrack is wind riffling through oat beards. In late May the crop is still green, its tips brushing your shins; by mid-July the same stems bleach to gold and crackle like newspaper underfoot. Photographers favour the half-hour before sunset when the cereal acts like a reflector panel, throwing warm light back onto anyone walking through it.

Winter rewrites the deal. Temperatures dip below zero on most nights from December to February, and the wind that felt refreshing in June now carries enough bite to make ears ache. Snow is patchy—rarely more than a dusting—but the earth turns iron-hard, so boot treads are advisable. What you lose in colour you gain in clarity: on still mornings the distant Sierra de la Demanda appears sharp enough to cut paper, 60 km away yet looking close enough to touch.

Spring and autumn occupy the sweet middle. April brings green wheat and blood-red poppies; October smells of crushed grapes drifting up from the lower valley around Nájera, 18 km south. These shoulder seasons also coincide with the most reliable weather windows: average daytime highs of 18 °C, little rain, and night skies dark enough for the Milky Way to cast a faint shadow. Astro-tourism hasn’t arrived here yet; bring your own star chart and a flask of calimocho (the local student mix of red wine and cola) and you’ll have the cosmos to yourself.

When the village remembers it’s Spanish

August fiestas last three days and triple the population. Brass bands rehearse at nine in the morning; at eleven at night the same bands march back through the lanes, trumpets slightly out of tune after liberal wine top-ups. There is no fairground, just a makeshift bar under a plastic awning dispensing pinchos of chorizo for €1.50 and cañas of lager for €1.30. Visitors are welcomed with the polite curiosity reserved for distant cousins—press a coin into the donation box for fireworks and someone will insist on buying you a drink.

Winter traditions stay behind closed doors. The matanza—home slaughter of a family pig—still happens in early January, though EU rules mean it can no longer be advertised. If you rent a cottage on the outskirts (there are two, both booked by word-of-mouth) the aroma of paprika and rendered fat may drift through the wall at dawn. Don’t expect an invitation; this is pantry-stocking, not performance.

Logistics for the self-reliant

Accommodation within the village limits itself to those two self-catering houses, each sleeping four and costing around €80 a night. Anything grander—hotels, swimming pools, credit-card bookings—lies 12 km away in Nájera, along with the nearest petrol station and cash machine. Santa Coloma’s solitary bar opens from 08:00 for coffee and churros, closes at 14:00, then reopens unpredictably in the evening. If the shutter is down, drive east to Azofra (8 km) where Casa Ramiro grills lamb chops over vine cuttings for €14 a rack.

Road access is straightforward but assumes you’re comfortable on single-carriageway Spanish highways. From Logroño take the N-120 south-west for 35 minutes, turn off at the NA-134, then follow signs for 11 km of curves. The tarmac is good; the hazard is wildlife—wild boar at dusk, red-legged partridge at dawn. Buses run twice daily from Logroño except Sundays; the stop is a metal pole with a timetable faded to hieroglyphics.

Mobile reception is patchy on Vodafone and O2, non-existent on Three. Download offline maps before you leave the main road and remember that Google’s estimated walking times assume you’re part mountain goat; add twenty-five percent for flat terrain, fifty for mud.

Leaving without the hard sell

Santa Coloma will not change your life. It offers no souvenir shops, no Michelin stars, no ancient ruins with multilingual boards. What it does provide is a calibration point: a place where the scale of human settlement against open land feels properly proportioned. Stay for two hours and you’ll have seen the streets; stay for two days and you’ll start noting how the wheat changes colour hourly, how the church bell measures the day more accurately than any watch. After that, the plain beckons further south toward Soria, or back north to the wine cellars of Haro. Either way, you’ll leave with dust on your shoes and a slightly better understanding of how quietly Spain can live when no one is watching.